âWe did two takes of the song, and itâs performed in front of a pretty big crowd,â Demme remembered. âAnd by that point, Meryl wasnât even looking at the strings, she was just playing.
âOzymandiasâ is at first glance a sonnet about the transitory nature of life and its pretensions of fame and fortune. The decaying, ancient statue bears witness to the fact that the pursuit of power and glory for their own sakes are not only fleeting, but they are also illusory, unworthy ambitions even within the lifetime of their seekers.
A poem, actually. A very ominous poem. Although the name Ozymandias (which means a tyrant, a dictator, a megalomaniac; someone or something of immense size, a colossus) has Greek roots and dates back to roughly 323 BC, Percy Bysshe Shelley brought the word to prominence in 1818 after publishing a sonnet by the same name.